#no beta read i read this aloud to my partner we die like men

[gatheredfates]

17. — audience (Elandervier)

ONE WORD WRITING PROMPTS. Funnily enough, I was playing with a concept similar to this that hasn't amounted (yet). Consider this a prelude of sorts if I end up writing it. CONTENT WARNINGS. This fic deals with mature themes including, but not limited to: pregnancy, childbirth, mentions of abortion and women's bodily autonomy, misogyny and my personal interpretation of a woman's place in Ishgardian high-society. Please do not read if any of these are personal triggers. I have done my due diligence to warn ahead of time.

i'm glad i met the devil because he showed me i was weak, and a little piece of him is in a little piece of me.

The rage of the girl banged on the bones of the woman, all bared teeth and frothing anger. She knew her well, this outraged daughter — kicking, screaming, wailing in her hysteria, ungovernable and unknowable.

Unsightly. Unbecoming. Fifteen years on and her mother's words were ever the knife she dug into her breastbone as if to sever a rib and deliver it to the daughter. 'Yes, we are ugly. Bide your time,' it said, 'There will be deliverance soon, be still. These lessons will be useful to us.'

"I didn't know where else to go."

Elandervier didn't like that she recognised the girl's name — that she watched stony-faced and set-gazed her deliverance onto the marital bed, the third daughter in a line of women and still-born sons. The babe was passed haphazardly to her, a hiss to bathe and swaddle while the lord of the house screamed and tore down the nearby torchères like he intended to deliver them to the Hells himself. "The gods themselves fuck with me!" He declared while his wife cried and consoled him from his bed, "Of the duties you perform, you give me useless fucking women!"

This useless woman was a pragmatic woman for making it this far. The bobbin lace on her cuffs were bare and browned now, hanging by single threads in some places, but it did not waste in the snow gnawed at by the wolves. She was thin but not emaciated, the vigour in her gaze undercut only by the hand that pressed to the swell of her belly, and she looked to the witch with her mother's brown eyes — the very same which plucked her from her arms all those years ago, soothing her that she would be loved.

She would be safe.

The first lie in a thread woven by Ishgardian society, another falsehood added to the tapestry of violation — white, in that it was pure and born from a fervent wish — but would not stay when the blood was doused over the frame.

The lordlings were never pragmatic. When their sons were killed by fire, famine and fatigue they fought over the scraps of their lineage like carrion birds — all to the machine. But never their daughters. A daughter who fought was a daughter of the Brume, she lived and died destitute, but their daughters? Pretty girls waged wars on their wombs and the hearth of their houses; they were too empathic, too gentlehearted, too emotionally intelligent for the field. Ratatoskr was but a woman killed by men for seeing through the propaganda.

Control the womb, control the war.

"Whose?" Elandervier did not bother with a proper introduction, ink-dyed fingers gesturing to the pregnancy. The girl looked down and pet her skin so tenderly, even as her voice warbled with her rage.

"My lord husband's," bitterly replied, "That I should give him the pleasure."

The girl in her bones banged painfully on the filaments. That this should be what she was known for; devourer of children, the witch in the dark, the last bastion for desperate women choosing between three kinds of death; the man, the tundra or the severing of the soul. El sighed and rose to her feet, sliding a knife free from the belt on her waist as she stepped towards the girl. When she recoiled the witch shook her head and gestured for her to open her palms.

"You have choice to make," she said, settling the blade on her skin, "A sacrifice must be made."

Six months later two lords lay dead in their beds — eviscerated at the abdomen, disembowelled as if something was trying to tear it away. 'What a travesty!' the gentry declared, looking at the hysterical girl, 'That she should be delivered from the wilds by Halone's grace mere weeks after their death! What savagery, what witchcraft!'

The void knew its kin better than most: the all-consuming hunger, the revel in wild panic. Imbued in an animal and fed the blood of the babe, parricide was a indulgent taboo that fed its aether and stole their souls for the witch.

A little boy was discovered on the doorstep of a peasant house desperate for a child. After the war, they were funded by a wealthy noblewoman who kept her distance, wishing only the best for the babe. In her home, the skull of a wolf bared teeth over her fireplace where she told stories of how she fended off the wilds with naught but a knife.

One soul distilled into raw aether, given to a 'useless' girl to help her survive. The other Elandervier fed to Gobnip.

After all, she told the girl inside her bones, these lessons were useful to us.

#｡･ﾟﾟ･ — 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 : elandervier #my writing #I'M NOT SORRY FOR THISSSS #ishgard is messed! up! #thank you for coming to my ted talk! #i will not stop #no beta read i read this aloud to my partner we die like men #get it #i'll see myself out #｡･ﾟﾟ･ — sea answers things